[newarkhiphop]

how hard is it to maintain/ clean?

Am thinking of picking up some white or black sand in a few

does it take long to settle? how is the cleaning procedure ? any extra steps

 

[thekoimaiden]

If you're still new to aquariums I would stay away from sand as it is harder than gravel to keep clean. You can vacuum deep in the gravel, but not in sand. You will either need to stir it up manually (and make your tank cloudy in the process), or have a creature like Malaysian trumpet snails do it for you. If you don't, you could get anoxic pockets that produce noxious gas. The gas will eventually erupt through the sand and hurt anything in its path to the surface. In fact, if you are standing over the tank when it happens, it will harm you.

 

[Bombalurina]

I've actually found it easy to deal with, as long as you give it what it needs. I rinsed it several times before adding it to my tank. It was very cloudy at first but it settled within hours.
I stir it once a week using my fingers to keep gas pockets from forming. You don't need to stir it vigourously, just enough to aerate it. It tends to settle extremely quickly and I don't get a cloudy tank as a result. This could be due to the fact that I am using aquarium specific sand, however, not play sand or pool filter sand.

Cleaning it is both simple and tricky. I hated it at first, because I had a lot of shrimp and snails, which pooed all over it and it looked terrible, because of course the poo stays on top. Then my sorority girls ate all those critters, and now it looks pretty good. To clean it, you hover your gravel vacuum over the top and the dirt (in theory) get sucked up. Generally, I end up getting some sand up, too.

Gravel is much easier to deal with, but sand does have a lovely look to it. If you are prepared to put in the extra work, it's nice.

 

[newarkhiphop]

yea end up picking up some white sand from petco, wasnt too bad, lol kind freaked my yellow delta out at first, them he thought it was food lol but he was good after a while

 

[kfryman]

I have a terrible experience with the black sand from Petco, it clung to air bubbles and then floated to the surface. I am now using play sand and I am loving it, not to hard to maintain any way. The poop stays on top, and the gravel siphon picks it up easily. If you have no live plants, then poke the sand, well actually with live plants you still need to poke it.

If you do decide to go with sand I would strongly recommend play sand or pool filter sand. For a 50 pound bag for around $5. Instead of paying like $5 for like 2.5 pounds or something. The play sand also looks natural, it even looks as it belongs there, much cheaper then buying substrate from the Petstore too.

Haha didn't see you picked up sand already.

 

[newarkhiphop]

lol picked up a 5lb bag from petco

so whats this about "poking" the sand i keep reading? how often do i have to do that?

, i am testing the sand out in one of my 3 one gallon tanks, i do 100% water changes every 3-4 days

 

[pasoindy]

I am used to deep sand beds as they are common in saltwater setups. Typically, the sand is quite deep, and there is a "clean up crew" of hermit crabs, snails, and shrimp that constantly stir the sand bed up and keep it clean.
For my Betta tank, we went with a mix of gravel and that awful PetCo sand that kfryman mentioned. It did indeed stick to air bubbles and float. Eventually it stopped, but it was annoying. I really wish I had gone all sand or all gravel. I don't like the mix since most of the sand has settled to the bottom due to my stirring. I've thought about getting Malaysian Trumpet Snails to mix up the bed for me, but anything but a Nerite freaks me out. I don't want to wake up one morning to find a billion snails. So, all I do is take my gravel vac and wave it gently just over the top of the substrate to whip up the poo (ew) so the vac can grab it.
If I had to do it all over again I would use Eco Complete or Instant Aquarium and not do a mix.

 

[Bombalurina]

so whats this about "poking" the sand i keep reading? how often do i have to do that?

Basically, you need to disturb the sand with a chopstick or your fingers or something to make sure no gas pockets have formed inside it. I do it with my fingers, just running my fingers back and forth through it and turning it around, agitating it a bit, making sure it's all aerated.

 

[PaintingPintos]

So if I had a 2.5 or 5 gallon tank with Omelette in it... would a few ghost shrimp be enough to stir up the sand? Red cherry shrimp? Nerite snails? Anything? Or should I just work at it manually?

 

[pasoindy]

So if I had a 2.5 or 5 gallon tank with Omelette in it... would a few ghost shrimp be enough to stir up the sand? Red cherry shrimp? Nerite snails? Anything? Or should I just work at it manually?

I don't think the shrimp stir. Mine didn't. They just scampered around picking up stuff off the top. Mine were too small and fragile to do any digging.

Apparently Malaysian Trumpet Snails are great for stirring. They burrow down during the day and come out at night - mostly. I've been considering getting some, but I see people on the web saying once you got em, then you can't get rid of them. They can breed like mad if there's a lot of food lying around, and they are asexual so they only need to love themself!
Still... I'm tempted. I only have one fish so food on the bottom isn't a problem for me. My piggy doesn't let any scraps hit the ground.

Nerite Snails don't burrow, but I'm not sure about Mystery Snails. I don't think they would stir as good as the tiny MTS.

 

[Bombalurina]

Shrimp definitely won't do it for you, and most snails won't either. Personally, to avoid an MTS explosion, I'd just do it manually. It's pretty easy.

 

[PaintingPintos]

I don't think the shrimp stir. Mine didn't. They just scampered around picking up stuff off the top. Mine were too small and fragile to do any digging.

Apparently Malaysian Trumpet Snails are great for stirring. They burrow down during the day and come out at night - mostly. I've been considering getting some, but I see people on the web saying once you got em, then you can't get rid of them. They can breed like mad if there's a lot of food lying around, and they are asexual so they only need to love themself!
Still... I'm tempted. I only have one fish so food on the bottom isn't a problem for me. My piggy doesn't let any scraps hit the ground.

Nerite Snails don't burrow, but I'm not sure about Mystery Snails. I don't think they would stir as good as the tiny MTS.

Thanks for telling me I MIGHT try trumpet snails because 1.) they're gorgeous and 2.) they are nocturnal....lol. I have a special fear of large snails.... Trumpet snails don't get that big, do they?
And I'm not sure about Mystery snails. I had one in my goldie tank and I have VERY large pebbles in there (my goldies are especially talented at nomming on things too big to swallow and I have to do the Heimlich mavuever on them....not fun lol) which collect lots of algae. Well he just went across the gravel straight to the castle and hung about there. He didn't really like being on the ground. Maybe mine was just weird, though ^.^